Ordinary diners who take part in our annual survey each spring review restaurants and leave their feedback, but we also ask them to score restaurants from 1-5 on food, service and ambience. Harden’s then uses an average of these scores and measures them against other establishments in the same price bracket to arrive at the ratings published in the guide and online.

Snippets from some of your feedback may end up in the overall Harden’s review, noticeably they appear in “double quotation marks”. The rest of our pithy, bite-sized restaurant summaries are compiled by analysing the survey data and extracting recurring themes, looking at whether or not a venue was nominated in any of our categories – like ‘favourite’ or ‘most overpriced’ – and, of course, looking at the ratings for food, service and ambience.

The Harden’s ratings indicate that a restaurant is:

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All reviews are compiled from survey comments and ratings, without any regard for our own personal opinions, except in cases where restaurants are too new to have been included in the survey. If you want the editors’ view on new restaurants in London you can find them in our Editors’ Review section.

News

Hart brothers to open yet another restaurant in Coal Drops Yard

Not content with three new restaurants in the buzzing Coal Drops Yard, the Hart brothers’ Barrafina team will be launching another in 2019.

Parrillan will be a casual terrace bar and grill – a partially covered space with room for 100 diners. The menu will be meat, fish, and seafood-led, with an emphasis on foods cooked over flame by guests on their own table-top grills.

The name Parrillan is taken from the Spanish ‘parilla,’ meaning ‘grill’. Executive chef Angel Zapata Martin’s took his inspiration from Ibicencan/Ibizan restaurant C’an Pilot, where he used to eat during his time working as a private chef on the island. The design is led by James Hart, who worked with Andy Martin Architects.

Martin, said of the opening: “I love the relaxed and participatory nature of table-top grill restaurants and am really looking forward to showcasing some of the beautiful produce we get in, in different ways to how we do at Barrafina. Parrillan will be very approachable, delicious and you’ll be able to book.”

Parrillan is due to open in May. It will be – so they say – be the final opening from Harts Group at Coal Drops Yard. It will join a branch of Barrafina, Casa/Plaza Pastor, and The Drop wine bar, which launched in October.

Cumulatively the new operations will nigh-on double the number of people the Harts employ in their London restaurant business.